To track health researches, the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (PCHRD-DOST) is developing the Philippine Health Research Registry (PHRR), a publicly accessible database for all health researches and clinical trials being conducted in the country.

The defining feature of the registry is that it is prospective, researchers themselves register and update their research information, hence research details will be known even before the start of actual research. This will enable researchers, funding agencies, policymakers and planners to track health researches. Thus, duplication of researches will be avoided and allocative efficiency for health research funding will be improved.

The registry also conforms to the World Health Organization (WHO) – mandated clinical trial data field requirements. This is a 20-minimum data fields accessible to all levels of users. This feature will ensure equal opportunity for everyone who wants to participate in clinical trials and help companies recruit the most number of patients in a shorter period of time.

Part of the data field requirements is the inclusion of universal identification and secondary identification numbers that will serve as identifier for every clinical trial registered and conducted in different countries. According to Dr. Manju Rani of the WHO, this feature is very important to account clinical trials from different countries as part of the ASEAN Harmonization for GCP (Good Clinical Practices) and the ASEAN Network for Clinical Trials.

To encourage registration to PHRR, the Philippine National Health Research System (PNHRS) core agencies composed of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Department of Health (DOH), Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and the University of the Philippines Manila (UP Manila) will come up with a policy making registration to PHRR a pre-requisite to the release of funding for health R&D projects funded by these agencies.